The cotton ball tree

Although San Diego is defined as a desert in terms of annual rainfall, it also has a Mediterranean climate, so if you can meet the water needs of virtually any plant, it can grow here in San Diego. There even are redwood groves at the San Diego Zoo (coming out of the polar bear exhibit) and at Safari Park (going up to Condor Ridge).

One of the more unusual trees that grows here is what I call the “cotton ball tree.” Looks like this:

The top two pictures were taken at the San Diego Zoo. The tree is so tall that I had missed it until a few years ago when it was dropping flowers and cotton balls. I asked at the Information Booth what the name of the “cotton ball tree” was. They knew exactly which tree I was talking about.

It’s a silk floss tree (Ceiba speciosa).

The lower part of the trunk often is swollen, while young tree trunks and the upper trunk and branches of older trees are covered with thorns. Roses don’t have anything on this tree!

The silk floss tree is a deciduous tree native to the tropical and subtropical forests of South America, mainly in Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, northeast Argentina, and southern Brazil.

It is resistant to drought and moderate cold, and grows quite fast when water is abundant. It can get up to 82 feet tall. In an unusual twist for trees, the trunk is green, which means that it is capable of photosynthesis when leaves are absent. In older trees, the lower part of the trunk usually turns to gray. The swollen trunk stores water, as do the thorns.

The fruit is a ligneous ovoid pod, which sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel. They look like this:

Once the pods ripen, they burst open to reveal a mass of cotton balls surrounding seeds the size and color of black beans.

The cotton is used as stuffing (think pillows) and in packaging, and to make canoes, paper, and ropes. The seeds provide both edible and industrial vegetable oil.

I guess the only thing to do is buy an expensive organic mattress and tear it apart to find out……..LOL…………..I probably shouldn’t laugh. Shortly after my wise old grandmother adopted me when I was 11, I had gone to bed when the pillow poked me. “How can a pillow poke you?” I asked. She said that the pillow had chicken feathers in it. I didn’t believe her, so the next day when I came home from school, I got a knife and sliced open the pillow. Well, guess what? Yep. Chicken feathers. And guess which little boy got the whipping of his life?

That silk moss tree looks like my leg! It’ll be interesting if the x- ray on knee on Monday reveals my leg has indeed transmuted into one of these trees! I love the cotton balls 🙂 Very different. ..and very cool and so pretty with those pink flowers 🙂

The San Diego Zoo is both an internationally recognized zoo and an internationally recognized botanic garden. There are over 300,000 plants representing 3,500 plant species on its 1,900 acres. I always tell visitors to slow down and look at the plants as well as the animals. The plants won’t look back at you or do silly things, but they like being looked at, too.

I found 2 of these trees at 610 Euclid, national city, ca. Those cottony balls and thorns had me going. So nice to describe the tree to my browser to find out what it is and immediately to you blog! One of them is full of those pods, too. I got some pics of them, too.